As a semi-retired software engineer and an often hated critic of the many apps that come from overseas, especially from the Asian theater, I still receive my share of ‘try this and tell me what you think of it,’ requests.

Some are so stupid that I send a polite email to the developer saying ‘no thanks‘. Others, like the makers of the mobile app, ‘Yeshi,’ I promise a quick spin around the Superhighway.

Because I am into slang words, I know that ‘Yeshi’ is a phrase meaning that a dead person can’t until rest until the circumstances of their death changes. Call me intrigued as I install the app to my phone and touch start the moment it is uploaded.

Where I am from that moment on…well, let’s jus’ say that my last detailed memory is of sitting on my back porch, in my favorite, well-faded University of Nevada-Reno t-shirt, drinking a can of Hamm’s beer and smoking a Camel Gold. That’ll change, too.

In an altered, but very familiar reality, I’ve returned to my childhood home, a home that hasn’t been a part of my life since I was 20. I’m parked across the street, the nose of my truck pointed in the wrong direction as I sit, observing the old place.

In the drive is my old man’s 1964 Chevy pickup. There’s also the gold-colored Opel station wagon, that I still think of it as an embarrassing piece of shit. In front of the house, by the sidewalk is my 1968 Dodge Charger, one very cool car and chick-magnet.

“Odd,” I think, “This is exactly how it looked when I last saw the place.”

By now I’m out of my truck and walking across the street and somehow I already know what I will find beyond that unlocked door.

The first time, if that really is the case, I joined four faceless, shapeless figures around our old oak table, the same table we had all through my childhood. At least three of the people stood on one side of the table, with a fourth standing at what I concluded to be the head of the table.

On the table is a standard sized cake, like the one my mother used to bake for each of our birthdays, with white moldy frosting and several candles, too many for me to count. Looking the cake, candles unlit, it begins to heave up, and then it erupts with maggots.

These maggots crawl over the table in every direction and quickly turn into flies and soon the entire house is clouded by the black, buzzing and biting pests and I’m forced to wake up. By this time, I’m sweaty, chilled and panting like I jus’ ran the 100-yard-dash and I’m on my bed now , with no recollection of how I got here.

But this most recent slip into this alternate reality comes with out my having to use YeshiApp. It also comes with three new features.

The first is the sight as seen through the sliding glass door of the old rusty green and red swing set which is standing idle in the backyard. The other thing, the more profound thing, the thing that takes my breath away are the people, dead members of my family.

“Hi,” my brother says to me. I know it’s him because he’s the one with the severe damage to his head, from where he blow the back of his skull out with a shotgun. I find him the most difficult to look at, as he’s missing a part of his tongue, several teeth and his eyes are crossed, but outward, as if he were trying to look at his ears, which one hangs loosely from his scalp.

Mom is rail thin, a near-skeleton, like she was when the cancer took her life. I was with her the early morning she stopped breathing and I had to wrestle dad to prevent him from doing CPR on her, which would have been against her wishes.

“I’m doing fine,” she says taking my left hand in hers. It’s the same words she used to say as she lay in bed and in pain, after the hospice gal told us her ending was near. What remains of her lips are a waxy-yellow and tattered.

My father is there as well. He smells of Vitalis hair tonic, automobile grease and burnt tobacco, but seems genuinely happy to see me as he grabs my left shoulder, giving it a squeeze like he used to, before his third and final heart attack.

“Let’s go work on your car,” he wheezes breathlessly, “When we’re done here.” His broken nose, from his semi-pro boxing career, has fallen off, leaving a triangular cavity between and below his still, blue eyes.

“Sorry, I wasn’t here to…” I start.

“No worries,” he interrupts.

Then there’s Sissy, who is standing between them, smiling like Alice’s Cheshire Cat, but not disappearing. I hadn’t seen her with both of her legs and absent her wheelchair since I was in my early 20’s.

“Told you I almost as tall as you,” she giggles. I can see the veins in her neck where they collapsed and have left deep inverted lines in her skin. Her heart had failed after so many years of unhealthy living.

My eldest sister isn’t here. She’s still alive.

That’s the third thing — and it hits me hard, like a punch in the gut: “Does this mean I’m not?”

Then it also occurs to me that the kitchen window is open. Has it always been open?

No. The flies would have found their way outside, had it been.

I think about jumping out of it.

Not a far jump, we’re on the ground floor of a single floor house. As I make up my mind to do this – a raven lights on the sill and begins pacing back and forth.

Then they join each other in singing to the tune of ‘Happy birthday to you…,’ “The show must go on, the show must go on…” and as if on cue, maggots burp up like a water fountain in an Esther Williams movie, from the rotted cake and begin to turn into flies.

The raven is enjoying the feast of a lifetime as it squawks, “Ye-Shi,” between beak fulls.

As I look around in terror once again, I see that I’m clutching my cellphone in my right hand, the speaker is on and I can hear what sounds like Asian coming from it. One male voice says, “Ye,” the other, a woman says, “Shi.”

“Yes-yes,” I understand, one says in Korean, the other Chinese. I’m awake, but can’t close the app.

Heading north on Highway 101, and as we crossed the bridge spanning Big Lagoon in Humboldt County, I saw rather a large man in a ghillie suit standing chest deep in the water, partially obscured by reeds. When I saw him, I recalled how as a child, I’d seen an elk swimming, head and antlers above the lagoon’s surface.

I watched the large man for as long as I could.

Once I couldn’t see him anymore, I turned to my wife. She was already looking at me and asked, “What?”

“I’m afraid to say, you’ll laugh at me.”

“Bigfoot, huh?”

A non-believer. I said nothing more about it.

Two days later, heading southbound this time, I looked to the place where I’d seen him standing and there was no one there.

“California’s idea of dining-in is eating outside,” I kept thinking each time seeing a restaurant serving guests in their table, chair and tent-covered parking lots. It was stated in jest and mostly in my head.

Having said it once to my wife was enough after she told me to ‘knock it off,’ which I did. We were traveling in the same car.

Later, as we sat at an eatery, enjoying an early evening dinner, I proceeded to see myself dining at a sidewalk cafe along the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in gay Pair-ee. My wife refused to buy into my wanderings.

July 2020 has been a rough month, as a number of friends and acquaintances have died.

On July 3, Dorothy Chubbuck passed away in Roseburg, Oregon. She was what we kids called a ‘track mother.’ Her son, David and I ran track when we were in high school and this is how I came to know her. I also worked with her daughter Ann, when she was the receptionist at KPOD radio station. Mrs Chubbuck, as I always called her, was always full of the best encouragement and never had a cross word for anyone. She was born on August 22, 1931, in Randle, Washington. She was 88.

Cheryl Chapman passed away at age 59, in Seattle, Washington, on July 18, 2020. She was born November 12, 1960 on Oberlin, Ohio. Her family moved to Crescent City at some point in 1965. Cheryl and I  attended high school together. Described by some as hard working and a perfectionist, others called her a free spirit. Cheryl was both, with an infectious smile to boot.  She also lived in Reno, Nevada for a while, where we became reacquainted. If I recall correctly, she was married at one time to another classmate of ours, Scott Chapman.

On July 10, Sandra Nuss, 82, passed away in Crescent City, California. She was born on August 11, 1937 in Richmond. California. I knew Sandra, or Sandy as she preferred to be called, because of her daughter Lora, whom I live with briefly back in the very early 80’s. Sandy was a singer, (performing professionally with country music singer’song writer Chester Smith in the 50’s,) an artist, historian and an excellent genealogist. She attended Hollywood High with actor Marty Milner, of ‘Route 66’ and ‘Adam-12’ fame.  She would never tell you this though, because she was too modest.

Steve Redmond passed away July 24. Born in King City, California on January 17, 1963, Steve is another classmate from high school, though in my brother Adam’s class. The very first time I met him, we were seated next to one another on a pep-rally bus headed to Gold Beach, Oregon. We remained friends ever since. Recently, he and I had talked about how he is listed on-line in the ‘Humboldt-Del Norte Wrestling Champions and All County Wrestlers’ site for the year 1981, in the 167 pound weight class. A few years ago he contracted pancreatic cancer and like the fighter he was, he battled it right up to the end. He was 57.

Five words at a time.
Pounded out in short sentences.
Staccato, pointed, sharp, and quick.
If you think it’s hard.
Then you think too hard.
It’s about language and control.

Hold back on the emotion. Grasp each word in perfection. Going home is not easy. Seeing home decaying is harder. It is time for goodbye. Seeing people drown in moisture. The wet, not jus’ natures. There is an endless crying. Tears filling litter-filled gutters.

A log truck rolls by. It has no real destination. Chip trucks absent from roadways. Fresh wood chip odor gone. Fishing vessels remain at dock. Men working their jobless decks. Weeds and brush remain uncropped. Signage covered by high grass. Dead-fall tucked in between trees. No hand allowed to touch.

So many bodies moving about. But no one really working. Shopping carts hold every possession. Gaunt, fatigued faces, broken spirits. Lost in a smoky haze. A sullen glance of eye. A furtive look turned away. No one wants to know. Nobody cares to see it. But it is there, seen.

Seeing five train engines rotting. This is the full story. Rot is everywhere you look. There are few memories remaining. Those that are only were. Society and communities in distress. This is what we saw. Witnessing the deterioration of neighborhoods. People sleeping, living in streets. Drugs are their dominate feature. Government more interested in politics.

Yeah, those five train engines. Each stacked end to end. Decrepit, graying, rusted, abandoned hulks. There is no future here. But people keep moving in. Burdening the system even further. A Shangri-la draped in cobwebs. Beneath that, a black mold. And a persistent aching sadness. It adds to the chill. The overcast skies and fog. It’s all a tragic lie.

A heavy sadness covers this.
To know people, those loved.
Unwilling to change their lives.
Refusing to understand this poison.
That death overtakes all things.
Five word sentences, all’s left.

It was as if I had ‘an itch that I couldn’t scratch.’ How many times have I heard that, said this, thinking I knew what it meant. Today I learned, as I scrambled out of the house, half-wild and needy, heading into the lower hills jus’ to the west of us for some quiet time and to perhaps hike some of the shorter game trails.

You can always tell that they are game trails. Rarely is there scat, the trail is clean of dead fall and scrub grasses and never goes over large rocks, always around. I love to explore these trails to see where they lead, up or down the hillside, often to water or a shade of tree, also a sign of water.

But this time I found a clearing off the side of this trail. I followed it in as it had none of the ear-marks of being made my coyotes, rabbits or deer. This one was all wrong and I figured it to be human made and I was right as it lead to the butte of a 20-foot slab of stone, a flat in the hillside where large chunks had fallen to the ground.

Oddly, I noted, someone had taken the time to clear the base of this small cliff of the majority of the bits and pieces of rock that had fallen, which once I was standing next to it I learned that it sloped forward slightly, protecting it from the rain, snow and tumbling stone. As I drew closer, I saw that their were words etched in the facing.

Amazing! I had to step back so I could read it, an untitled maverick poem I think, and though badly faded by age and environment this is what I think is scratched into this certain place:

The censorship is not tongued!
The censorship is exceptionally inarticulate.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the censorship,
Gently it goes, the walk-on, the inarticulate, the nonspeaking.
I saw the greed, my generation destroyed,
How I mourned the excess.
Does the excess make you shiver?
Does it?
When I think of the happiness, I feel alive.
Does the happiness make you shiver?
Does it?

– HS Smith Aug 1932 Tenn.

As I sit in my room, typing out the words I transcribed into my notebook, I can’t help think of another ‘HS.’ This one being Han-Shan or maybe Hanshan, and who lived during China’s Tang Dynasty, and who wrote his poems on rocks around the caves in which he lived.

Makes me wonder if Smith were a ‘student’ of this long-ago poet. I also must beware that it could be an absolute fraud, words carved more recently than the etchings claim. If it is genuine, it’s a year older than my dad would be if he were still living, and if truly genuine, I wish I could slip into Smith’s mind to fully understand what was happening in his world.

Anyway, I shall not divulge this spot, this sand stone marvel, real or fake. And since I did not have my camera on me, I did not get any photos of it. I have found a lot of things in the high desert, but this beats most of them and leaves me blown away.

In recent days, and every since the Internet decided to celebrate Ernest Hemingway’s birthday, I’ve seen several articles detailing how his suicide was the final outcome of a man dealing with a sexual identity crisis. A number of scholars are citing letter that he wrote over the years to his many wives.

It makes me wonder what these same scholars would have to say about me and the fact that this morning, I had a dream in which I was young woman, size A cup titties and under my lacy panties a vagina and clit that I was unable to arouse. I don’t see how any of this has to do with one’s sexual identity.

It was a dream, admittedly a very strange dream, but I don’t think it’ll affect Taylor Swift or myself one bit. I would like to know if she had a strange dream wherein she became a pudgy, old man with a tiny and broken wee-wee.

If she did, I’m sure she’ll write a song about it and it’ll be another hit for her.

Personally, I think all of these screwball dreams are being caused by my working too hard on ‘stream of consciousness’ writing and that this is the result. And why couldn’t I dream I was an intelligent brunette, Megan Fox perhaps?

“You are so accident prone,” my wife says.

“No, I’m not,” I reply, “I jus’ move so fast at times that I become clumsy.”

“If you say so,” she smiles sweetly, “But I’ve never seen you move fast once.”

“Pffts,” I press through my tightly pursed lips.

The injuries, though not severe, take a toll on the body. Aside from a broken back, done years ago, as I’ve aged I’ve found my skin turning thin, so thin in fact that at times I’ve had to stop and asked: “Now where in the fuck is that blood coming from?” A tear here, there. Never had to worry about this when I was twenty. What do you mean I ain’t twenty no more? Then there are the crumbly bones and the loss of muscle. I used to have nice legs, but being unable to jog or walk long distances anymore they’ve become…what? Stringy? Thin? Sticks? I like ‘what’ better.

There are also the other injuries that happen on the periphery, like the hard-charging, hard-playing boys of next door. The eldest broke his hand running through his house, hitting it on the door frame of his room. Boys (and girls, too,) break parts of their bodies constantly. The younger of the two brothers broke his leg while riding his bike, then three days before his case was to come off, fell off something in the school yard and broke it again. Then while playing around on a scooter two days ago, the eldest jumped it from our other neighbors driveway, which is higher than ours, landing on our drive and then wiping out in the roadway. Broke the same hand and this time the arm.

Both boys and some other neighbor kids are out there right now jumping bikes and scooters. I won’t even go into the greater injury, this one being the pocketbook of Mom and Dad.

Up the street, our street, a ‘way’ really, we had a drive-by shooting. No one was injured, but it left a lot of folks in this usually quiet neighborhood a little shaken. I heard the three gun shots, but thought it was two-in-the-morning, but didn’t go look to see what was happening or even check the time. People blow off steam with guns and fireworks all the time, thinking this area is still rural. It is, but the people ain’t. More suburbanites coming this way on a weekly basis.

Sheriff’s department is still out investigating. Whomever it was, they blasted three holes into a house, that I’ve had my suspicions about for at least five-years. I’m not the only one. Rumor, and it’s only a rumor, is that it’s a drug house. But thinking back on it, I’m sure that if it were, the law would have been all over the place and we’d have all heard about it one way or the other.

“Did you hear anything?” the young deputy asked me as I was sweeping up the crap spilled from our trash can, that the garbage man managed to leave behind because they insist on using those stupid pinchers that squeeze the shape out of the plastic bin, while shaking the innocent piece of green, half to death.

“Yeah,” I said, “Three shots around two in the morning.”

“Any idea whether that came from the east or the west of you?”

“Nope, no idea. Gunshots happen out here and I don’t really pay close attention to them unless I hear voices to go with them.”

I looked west as another deputy’s rig came to a stop, his bubble-gums popping on.

“Your partners lights,” I said.

“Roger,” the deputy replied, “And thanks. Have a great day.”

No matter what the people in that house have done, they deserve to be safe in their beds at night. I’d go up there a stand watch but neither the cops nor my wife would take it very well. So I won’t go, which I’m sure is a disappointment to my 30-30, Betsy-Boo. That’s what I call her. I have no idea what she calls herself. It could be Bob for all I care. It has sat in the corner, fully loaded, one in the chamber, and has never gone out and shot anyone willy-nilly, jus’ because. So for that, this particular 30-30 can call itself whatever the hell it wants.

Another point of injury, which turned out okay was with our elder dog, Yaeger biting off the cap to a tube of diaper rash cream and getting it stuck in his trachea. The old doggo loves fish oil pills and could smell the fishy odor of the cream and decided to help himself to some. Still don’t have any idea how he got his teeth on it. He came out of the back room, choking, drooling, wheezing and scaring the shit out of us.

Found out, post-haste, that Mary and me still work well together in emergencies. I handle the medical shit and she handles logistics. She grabbed the tube of crap he’d found, as I performed a modified Heimlich, the kind you do only for dogs, dislodging it, but not fully clearing the back of his throat. By the time I picked him up and hauled him to the back seat of the car, Mary had it covered, the air conditioner at full-tilt and was opening the garage door. I was dialing the vet hospital declaring an emergency.

“Is there a number on the tube to call in the event of accidental ingestion?” the woman on the phone asked.

“Looking,” I answer, “No. But poisoning will be secondary in this case. He’s choking.”

“Oh,” she said, “I see. Are you en route?”

“Yes,” I responded in my bestest and calmest paramedic’s voice, “About ten-mikes out.”

Obviously, she’d been here before and returned, “Roger, we’re prepared.”

“Hmm, two ‘rogers,’ one day,” I think as I push the end button on my cellphone.

Meanwhile, Mary was driving like a professional, zipping and gliding between vehicles, left to the right, and right to the left, and back again. I believe that had I the equipment and the need, I could have slipped a catheter in a subclavian vein, jus’ below the collarbone had she been the boxes’ driver. Certainly felt like the old days.

Yeggs was in a panic naturally and starting to loose steam. I decided I couldn’t wait anymore and risking a bite was not as bad as him dying right there in the car. “After all this time, Yaeger,” I said, as if he could understand me, “This ain’t the way to go!” I shoved my hand in his mouth and found the plastic cap stuck at the base of his tongue, fingered it until I could get a hold of it and removed the fucking thing. He immediately settled down and like the old Lab that he is, he acted as if nothing was wrong and was in fact enjoying the car ride. Talk about transitioning in the ‘now.’ Called the vet and canceled the emergency and returned home where everything was copacetic once again.

I only ended up with a couple of scratches and one real tooth mark in my left hand from the ordeal.

So what fresh dangers do we have before us today. Hell. Who knows. I am going to mow the back yard, so there is that. Nope. The finally injury is suddenly witnessing the fresh pot of coffee, still peculating, and for no reason, bubbling, spitting and running its hot content all over the kitchen counter. Wasting such good coffee hurts. That’s akin to, but not as bad as, spilling an alcoholic beverage, which is technically, alcohol abuse.

“Damn it!” my wife growls as we begin cleaning up the mess of brown liquid and bits of ground bean, “I can’t believe I forgot to put the basket in place again.”

“It happens,” I say as calmly as I can.

“Yeah, but…”

“Don’t worry. We’ll get it cleaned up and make some more. In fact, I’ll make it this time.”

“No. I’ll make it again,” she says, exasperated.

I know better than to argue with her at this moment and thus avoid any possible injury.

Overheard while social distancing:

“They oughta call COVID-19  ‘the common core virus.’”

“Why’s that?”

“Nothings adding up.”

 

Early morning dialog.

“I have been off work because I won’t wear a mask, so I took a job as watchman for a logging outfit,” he said, “I am getting paid to camp out. You never know what life will bring. Good place and job to get my guns sighted in.”

“That is so cool,” I return, “Sounds like and adventure to me. Doing any writing?”

“Always gotta eff things up by bringing up writing, don’t you? Couldn’t leave it alone, could you?” I silently chastise myself. I shake my head at my reflection in the window, forlornly.

“Brought a note pad,” he continues, “Hiking this morning, saw grouse, hearing cow elk talk.”

“Good, write it all down,” I said.

Opened the gate on it, might as well move the cow from the one pasture to the next. “I need to learn to think before I open god-damned mouth,” I think with a sigh.

“Sort of like Kerouac’s fire tower?” he said.

“Exactly!” I exclaim.

“Jus’ spooked a doe,” he continues, “Two of them.”

“To me, that’s adventure,” I tell him.

“Me, too. Good country, God’s country,” he adds.

“Yes!” I said, “And I’m a bit jealous, too.”

“I brought lots of reading too. I am happy,” he tells me.

“I am happy too,” I said, “And sometimes that is enough, ain’t it?”

“Yes,” my friend replied, adding, “Almost always.”

---

Sitting at my desk, in front of my computer screen, and something they call a terminal, another point of irony that perhaps I only see, I don’t want to write anything beyond this. Instead, I think I’ll sit out in the shade of my backyard, in the summers heat, under the building clouds meant for a late afternoon thunderstorm and dream of my own fire tower, where my heart’s full.